aes26 International Evaluation Conference: Full Schedule

This is the draft aes26 program, subject to change. To register for workshops and the conference, go to: https://www.aes26.aes.asn.au/

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11:30am ACST

Building culturally grounded evaluation, led by First Nations communities

Wednesday September 16, 2026 11:30am - 12:30pm ACST

Rooms 1+2

Authors: Jen Lorains (Children's Ground), Veronica Doolan (Children's Ground), Pauline Grant (Children's Ground), Jackie Treeves (Children's Ground)

For too long our people have been the subjects not the leaders of evaluation and research: “Our people have been researched to death. It’s time we researched ourselves back to life” (William Tilmouth, Senior Arrernte man).
Children’s Ground (CG) is disrupting the status quo in research and evaluation. From daily data collection and designing evaluation tools, to analysing evaluation data through community and culturally centred evaluation frameworks relevant to each place.

Using practice evidence and collaborative reflection about how First Nations communities are leading service/program evaluation for their families and place, the workshop learning objective is that participants will increase their understanding of culturally grounded evaluation and gain practical strategies and skills that can be applied to their evaluation context.

The workshop will consist of two parts, including CG sharing practice evidence, followed by collaborative group/table strategy development.

Firstly, CG’s evaluation principles will be outlined, with First Nations leaders sharing experiences in action. Participants will reflect on 2-3 principles, documenting their effective and challenging experiences of working in line with the principes, then sharing with the larger group. CG’s First Nations leaders will respond, building on the knowledge being generated by the participants.

Secondly, CG’s First Nations leaders will share experiences of developing community and culturally centred evaluation frameworks, including a visual walk through of 2-3 frameworks developed by First Nations communities across three culturally and geographically diverse regions. Comparative examples of evaluation data analysis between CG’s cultural and western evaluation frameworks will also be shared, including methodological implications.

Participants will collaboratively document ideas for supporting First Nations people/communities to develop community and culturally centred evaluation frameworks in their context, then sharing with the larger group.

We believe learning how to embed culturally grounded evaluation from First Nations community’s real-world experience is an important contribution to holistic learning, complements theoretical learning.

Speakers

Jen Lorains

Director Research & Evaluation, Childrens Ground

Jen Lorains is the Director of Research & Evaluation at Children’s Ground. She works with each community to evaluate and evidence the impact of Children’s Ground’s empowerment, systems reform and integrated service platform.

Jen has undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications in applied social research and over 15 years experience designing and undertaking research and evaluation with communities and services. Her interest lies in working with communities to implement and evaluate approaches (within... Read More →

Veronica Doolan

Children's Ground

Pauline Grant

Jackie Treeves

Wednesday September 16, 2026 11:30am - 12:30pm ACST
Rooms 1+2 Stokes Hill Rd, Darwin City NT, Australia

Traditional and new ways

Format Skill building
Audience Level Intermediate, Advanced
Industry Economic development tourism and infrastructure, Health and disability, Education and training, Community and social services
ID 300

11:30am ACST

Building your first AI evaluation assistant: From setup to first analysis

Wednesday September 16, 2026 11:30am - 12:30pm ACST

Rooms 3+4

Authors: Ethel Karskens (Clear Horizon), Maree Dibella (Clear Horizon)
What participants will learn: This hands-on session teaches evaluators how to configure and use AI assistants for real evaluation tasks. Participants will leave with a working AI tool customised for their own work, whether that's coding interview transcripts, analysing open-ended survey responses, or synthesising progress reports.

Why this skill matters: Most evaluators have experimented with ChatGPT or similar tools, but few have moved beyond ad-hoc prompting to building reusable, reliable AI workflows. The gap between "asking ChatGPT a question" and "using AI as a systematic evaluation tool" is significant. This session bridges that gap by teaching the practical setup skills that turn general-purpose AI into specialized evaluation assistants that produce consistent, auditable outputs.

As AI becomes standard in evaluation practice, knowing how to configure these tools properly - with the right instructions, quality controls, and workflow integration - is becoming a core professional capability. This session responds directly to evaluators' need for practical AI implementation skills, not just conceptual understanding.

How we'll teach the skill:
Minutes 0-5: Quick orientation - what makes an AI "assistant" different from a chatbot
Minutes 5-15: Live demonstration - the facilitator builds an assistant for interview coding from scratch, narrating decisions
Minutes 15-40: Guided hands-on practice -participants configure their own assistant for a task they choose (interview coding, survey analysis, or report summarisation), using either sample data provided or their own files
Minutes 40-50: Group debrief -participants share one success and one challenge; facilitator troubleshoots common issues

How participants will engage: Participants will work on their own laptops throughout the session, following a structured build process with real-time facilitator support. They'll leave with a configured tool, a workflow template, and practical troubleshooting strategies they can apply immediately in their work.

Speakers

Ethel Karskens

Head Of Digital, Clear Horizon

I lead the data and insights strategy of Clear Horizon. This includes dashboard development and other data solutions to create insights for our clients.
I am interested in innovation, data for good, and creating a data-driven culture in organisations.

Maree Dibella

Senior Digital Consultant, Clear Horizon

Wednesday September 16, 2026 11:30am - 12:30pm ACST
Rooms 3+4 Stokes Hill Rd, Darwin City NT, Australia

Traditional and new ways

Format Skill building
Audience Level Foundational, Intermediate
Industry Information media and telecommunications
ID 315

2:30pm ACST

Using partnering principles to navigate power and ethics in evaluation

Wednesday September 16, 2026 2:30pm - 3:30pm ACST

Rooms 1+2

Author: Dana Cross (Grosvenor)

Effective evaluation increasingly depends on strong partnerships across communities, commissioners, service providers and evaluators. Yet partnering is often guided by goodwill rather than shared principles, leaving teams vulnerable to power imbalances, ethical drift and unspoken assumptions. This skill building session focuses on principles-based partnering, defined as the deliberate use of a small, shared set of agreed principles to guide roles, behaviours and decision making within evaluation partnerships.

The objective of the session is to build participants’ capability to use partnering principles intentionally and appropriately in real world evaluation contexts, particularly where values, authority and accountabilities differ. Drawing on applied evaluation practice, the session introduces principles based partnering not as a universal solution, but as a supporting mechanism that must be applied judiciously and adapted to context and place.

Participants will develop three core skills:
1.Identifying when partnering principles are likely to be helpful and when they are unlikely to add value or may even create risk.
2.Understanding and applying practical processes for establishing partnering principles, including who should be involved, how principles can be co-created, and how they can be revisited over time.
3. Using principles to navigate tension, power dynamics and ethical dilemmas as they arise during the evaluation lifecycle.

The session is designed as an interactive workshop. Participants will work in small groups to explore short evaluation scenarios, test whether principles-based partnering is appropriate, and practice establishing and applying principles in context. This will be followed by whole group discussion to surface lessons and challenges.
Participants will leave with a clear, adaptable approach for deciding when and how to establish and use partnering principles. The session is suited to foundational and intermediate evaluators seeking hands on skills grounded in real world practice.

Speakers

Dana Cross

Associate Director, Grosvenor Public Sector Advisory

Dana is a public sector expert, possessing over 17 years of deep experience advising government organisations on program evaluation, organisational review, service optimisation and performance management. She is a member of Grosvenor’s Executive Leadership Team as Head of Strategy... Read More →

Wednesday September 16, 2026 2:30pm - 3:30pm ACST
Rooms 1+2 Stokes Hill Rd, Darwin City NT, Australia

Ethics and integrity

Format Skill building
Audience Level Foundational, Intermediate
Industry Community and social services, Environment and climate change, Health and disability, Natural resources and energy, Public administration and safety
ID 118

4:30pm ACST

Managing the eight main enemies of evaluative thinking

Wednesday September 16, 2026 4:30pm - 5:30pm ACST

Rooms 3+4

Authors: Samantha Abbato
Learning objective: Participants will be able to identify and practise managing the eight major enemies of evaluative thinking in evaluation contexts.

Why this skill matters: Even experienced evaluators fall prey to thinking traps. Individual biases (including emotional reasoning, fast thinking, confirmation bias and overconfidence) undermine rigour. Group biases such as in-group favouritism and cascading effects distort collective judgement. Noise, both between evaluators and within a single evaluator at different times, creates inconsistency in decisions and recommendations. Together, these eight enemies threaten the quality of evaluations at every stage: from scoping and data synthesis to communicating findings.

This session equips participants with practical strategies to recognise and manage these threats for clearer, more defensible evaluative thinking.

How the skill will be taught: Using the Thinking-Bee Obstacles board game, participants work in small groups through evaluation-based scenarios that activate each of the eight thinking enemies. The game provides ego-safe, attention-directing play. Participants think through bee personas rather than as themselves, making it easier to surface and examine real thinking traps. A brief facilitator-led debrief anchors the game experience to participants’ own evaluation practice.

How participants will engage: Participants will play the Thinking-Bee Obstacles game in small groups of four to six, applying the eight enemies of thinking to realistic evaluation decisions.

The session closes with a structured reflection linking game insights to participants’ own work contexts.

Speakers

Samantha Abbato

Director, Visual Insights People

My twenty-plus years of evaluation experience are built on academic training in qualitative and quantitative disciplines, including mathematics, health science, epidemiology, biostatistics, and medical anthropology. I am passionate about effective communication and evaluation capacity-building... Read More →

Wednesday September 16, 2026 4:30pm - 5:30pm ACST
Rooms 3+4 Stokes Hill Rd, Darwin City NT, Australia

Traditional and new ways

Format Skill building
Audience Level Foundational, Intermediate
Industry Education and training, Arts and recreation services, Community and social services, Environment and climate change, Health and disability
ID 105

11:30am ACST

11:30am ACST

2:30pm ACST

4:30pm ACST

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